Braided
by ProfAT
Summary: Shuuhei braids Renji's hair, while also thinking about the universe. Because if fate exists and everything you have is predetermined, what does it mean to have something that's all your own?


**Author's note: rOARS a pal on tumblr was like "do a thing" and school was like "no" so I was like "I'm gonna do the thing"**

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

The monotonous and wholly unexpected turn from late fall to early winter brings with it the winds of change. Snow falls in fat flakes to fester in little clumps upon the rooftops, cats curl up under patches of sunlight as they tuck themselves away within the comfort of the indoors, and Renji's hair is done into a braid.

It's not a very good one, admittedly. It's pulled back and weaved into complicated layers piled on top of each other down to the free ends that swing back and forth with his movements from the back of his head like the tail on a kite. The tie is loose and strands come undone and fall forward into his face. Renji sweeps his hand over his forehead in a vain attempt to smooth the strands back into submission as he thoughtfully regards the coffee machine.

Shuuhei tries to refrain from grimacing as he watches Renji. The sloppiness of his own handiwork make his hands itch, twitching with the desire to fix, to improve. Looking at those loose strands gives Shuuhei an impression not unlike the one he receives when editing articles for the magazine, only Renji clearly needs a better proofreader than him. Renji doesn't betray any irritation, however. Aside from trying to blow hair out of his face and eventually just giving up and tucking it behind his ear, he goes about his business of pouring coffee and ad nauseum as if it were just another day.

And yet others take notice, such as Rangiku while she fondly peruses the complementary snack table.

"That's different." She notes, soft enough that only Shuuhei can clearly hear her as she arranges a small pile of donuts into a precarious tower on her napkin.

Shuuhei's not sure how to respond to that. He's not really sure how to respond to Rangiku on most days, but when she speaks like this it feels especially hazardous. Like waking up in the middle of the night to trip and stumble through a dark room, and before he knows it he's knocked something personal to the floor and he won't realize it until morning that it's still lying there in the open for the world to see.

"Well, clearly you need practice, but to be honest I'm not one to judge. I'm not huge on up-dos anyways." Rangiku continues with a shrug of her shoulders. "But even I can tell that's a pretty shitty braid. Don't worry about it, though. It's kinda cute, the way you can tell that you two are actually learning to live with each other. It'd be more weird if everything just stayed the same."

Shuuhei eyes her Leaning Tower of Pastries, partially because it is in legitimate danger of toppling and smearing frosting all over his feet and partially as a distraction so he doesn't have to reflect too deeply. "What a vague and highly subjective statement. It sounds as if you're saying we're immature in a really passive-aggressive way."

"You say that like you're trying to deny it." Rangiku says, and raises a challenging eyebrow.

Shuuhei probably has a pre-disposed deflective comment for that, but he doesn't get the chance to summon it from the depths of his brain just then because Renji appears just then and relieves Shuuhei of the banana-nut muffin in his hand.

"I swear, the moment we bring in anything from the World of the Living back it fritzes on us. Whatever, its not as if we needed more people hyped up and sleep deprived around here." Renji grouses, using the pants leg of his shihakusho to wipe off coffee ground stains from his hands. He pushes more hair out of his eyes again and the resulting pawing at his face leaves a black smear across his forehead and reminds Shuuhei of his attempt to catch up on a hundred-plus years of human culture and think "Simba."

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Rarely does Shuuhei take the time to sit back and try to recognize this place in the universe, if he could go so far to say that he's aware of himself enough to make that call. Shuuhei sees the universe as a machine, more or less- stuff goes in, stuff comes out, and he's only an itty bitty cog in the grand scheme of things.

Strangely, this is a thought that reassures him. It takes off some of the pressure to know that there will always be a million other cogs turning on in their own little lives inside the machine. No responsibly goes completely unshared, no mistake completely uncorrectable. There's something beautiful in efficiency, intensely satisfying about watching things just get done, even if the consequence is that Shuuhei only gets to take credit for a small portion of that.

He said as much to Renji one morning while fixing his hair into a braid, the vibrant strands like melted wax in his fingers.

Renji was sitting with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hand to Shuuhei couldn't tell if he was bored or just distracted when he replied, "If the world is a big machine, then who's running it?"

Shuuhei mentally curses as he fucks up a row and has to unweave the braid to start again. "Well, nobody really. Or everyone does, because the machine needs all the pieces."

"Sure. But the pieces obviously aren't all the same, right? You need different parts for a machine to work and some are more important than others. Like, the part of the machine that powers the engine is gonna be more essential than the little light that goes 'ding' when stuff's done."

"I suppose, yeah. What's your point?"

Renji grunts, bouncing one knee absently. It does Renji some good, Shuuhei thinks, to sit still for a little while, or at least as still as Renji ever really gets. He's not the kind of person who affords himself time to slow down. He needs to be reminded to do so, else tunnel vision sets in. Shuuhei has seen Renji actually forget to eat for almost an entire day once, and because Shuuhei loves eating so very much he found it especially terrifying.

"I don't really like that. It sounds too much like you're saying we should all just accept our lots in life, even if they're shitty." Renji muses, and his neck tenses with the effort of keeping still when Shuuhei pulls too hard on his hair by accident. "I think its more like, y'know, you can be born with the potential to be a certain kind of cog in the machine but you might end up being a different kind. I'm in the 'forge your own destiny, follow your dreams, yadda yadda; camp."

"You're in the camp that justifies you being rebellious and obstinate." Shuuhei corrects him affectionately, tying off his braid. There's still a lot of room for improvement.

"Toh-may-toe, toh-mah-toe."

x-x-x-x-x-x

The hair-braided sessions had occurred for a reason.

The first thing Shuuhei noticed about Renji's living quarters was how sparse they are. There was mostly plain and inexpensive furniture, as seen in all shinigami's quarters, and there were very few personal possessions. The most noticeable individual touches were the occasional pile of clothing pushes into a corner of the room, or empty food containers lying on the couch and counters. Renji had occupied this space for years and yet his personal living area looked hardly lived in at all.

This epiphany prompted Shuuhei to take a closer look at his own abode. He felt stab of guilt for his hypocrisy at the realization that his own living quarters weren't much better. Shuuhei was neater than Renji was, with no garbage or mess out. But he's also more cluttered. A stack of old copies of the Seireitei Communications that he hadn't realized he'd been collecting sat next to his nightstand. His toothpaste, toothbrush, and comb were lined up with an almost militaristic organization about them on his bathroom sink. It was all arranged so that Shuuhei could get in and get out as quickly as possible.

The result had been a spike in discomfort, a sensation setting in that was almost like claustrophobia. Shuuhei came to consider how odd it was that his home looked packed away, abandonable. There was nothing about this place that he couldn't recreate somewhere else in a day, nothing he wouldn't miss.

So in the end, having Renji sit on the floor between Shuuhei's feet while Shuuhei sat on the couch and braided his hair was an acceptable solution to not feeling at home in his home. Quite simply, it gave them both an excuse to stay in, and not to rush off right away to continue the hectic and frankly exhausting work of being themselves. It also provided them with something to do together, that they could just be there with Renji squirming as he tried to sit still and Shuuhei braiding and both of them talking and they wouldn't pull away from each other. The time spent this way is satisfying, it makes Shuuhei feel more in control of his routine. That for once their time is their own and theirs alone.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

"You know why I think you like doing this, if you were really honest?" Renji drawls, folding his arms over his knees.

"The love of spending time with you, dear." Shuuhei says dryly in response while he weaves red hair that briefly flickers copper in the sunlight, followed by a dull "Ow." when Renji smacks his knee too hard.

"Aside from that, obviously." Renji amends. "One of the reasons."

"Enlighten me." Shuuhei invites, more than a little distracted because starting off a braid is always the hardest part for him. He's never sure to start the braid high or low.

"Because you're like a cat that claws up furniture to mark it's territory. When you do this it's like you're putting up a big 'Shuuhei was here sign'." Renji says very matter-of-factly, and strikes Shuuhei as such a very Renji thing to say.

Shuuhei hums. "There might be some truth to that." The braid is halfway done, neatly interlocked in a straight weave between the stiff lines of Renji's shoulder blades. "Do you mind that?"

Renji makes a noise like "Eh." and quiets after that. Shuuhei thinks that might be all he's going to get until Renji pipes back up to say "Does it bother you to think that we're not going to have normal lives?"

"Is that relevant?"

"It might be, yeah."

"Then no."

Because Shuuhei's already accepted the fact. Just like he's accepted that there are shinigami half his age who die in situations where a captain could swing their sword and be done with it and just call it another Tuesday. He's come to terms with the fact that the chances of him doing the whole "normal life" thing with a house and kids and a yappy dog is slim- possible, perhaps, but monumentally unlikely.

Regardless of what potential he was born with, he's ended up here. And if he did it all over again he'd probably end up in more or else the same position anyways. It doesn't matter whether he was cast this way from the very beginning or gradually shifted his shape over time, he's now a set cog with a set function in the machine, though to what end he's turning he hasn't quite figured out just yet.

But maybe Renji's also right, and it's not fair. Because then if Shuuhei's set in his ways with his function in life and his un-homey home, does anything matter to him personally? If everything he does belongs to the machine, what does he really have to call his own?

So maybe it does mean something to leave a small piece to mark as his. It means something to make a slight difference, particularly to someone he cares about. It's important to do something for Renji, as insignificant as that is, because it keeps him from doing something stupid like clenching his fists and screaming at the stop of his lungs "Make sure they know you're mine!"

Because, frankly, that would be ridiculous. Renji belongs to Shuuhei, but part of him belongs to everyone else. He belongs to Soul Society and the World of the Living and the Big Machine. He did the moment he went to rescue Rukia, the second he joined the mission to Huenco Mundo. He belongs to the Machine every time his presence makes everyone around him feel less hopeless, every time they thoughts "It's going to be okay. Help has arrived. They have arrived. We're saved." as if Renji being part of Kurosaki's "clique" made him part of that elite band of rogue heroes, something a little more obscure and mysterious than everyone else.

Shuuhei shakes off any guilt that he might feel for wanting more of Renji than everyone else, more that is strictly "his fair share" by the Machine's standards. Because as selfish as it is to his own personal philosophy, Shuuhei realizes he really does want something that's only his, and that he doesn't have to share with the rest of the universe. How hard can it be, really, to leave some mark on the world, that he mattered because of who he is and not what he did?

So maybe this is all he needs, to sit here up to his wrists in Renji's mass of hair. That regardless of what the Big Machine wants, Shuuhei and Renji get to steal some time away all to themselves and no one else gets to take any of that from them. And it's what Shuuhei needs, because when they're alone Shuuhei matters to the individual more than the masses, and standing with someone pressed close to his side is the closest he's ever gotten to standing alone and he rather likes it that way.


End file.
